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Microsoft, Google, Lee Settle Hiring Dispute 73

Posted by Zonk from the everyone-play-nice-now dept.
linumax wrote to mention that Google, Microsoft, and Kai-Fu Lee have reached an agreement, after months of negotiation. From the article: "In a brief statement released late Thursday, Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said the parties had entered into a private agreement that resolved all issues to their mutual satisfaction. He also declined to give any details on the agreement, saying the terms were confidential and that all parties had agreed to make no other statements to the media regarding it. However, he did say that Microsoft was 'pleased with the terms of our settlement with Google and Dr. Lee.'" We originally reported on this back in July.
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Microsoft, Google, Lee Settle Hiring Dispute More

Microsoft, Google, Lee Settle Hiring Dispute

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  • Microsoft and google (Score:5, Funny)

    by Blade80 ( 416070 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:46PM (#14328490)
    I thought it said "microsoft and google settle dispute with kung fu"

  • Opera! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:51PM (#14328528)
    Google agreed to hand over Opera to their new owner!

  • How Is This A Rights Issue? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:53PM (#14328547)
    I don't see how Kai Fu Lee's hiring at Google as anything do with "my rights online" or anybody else's online rights. It was a civil complaint by Microsoft that we violated an agreement with them by going to Google, and now all parties have amicably settled their differences.

    Besides, why is this is an issue for slashdot? One man's hiring and change of companies is hardly newsworthy. Employment disputes like this are not uncommon.

    • Re:How Is This A Rights Issue? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:57PM (#14328574)
      Many here incorrectly think that non-compete agreements are invalid everywhere... which simply is not the case.
      • No, they are valid in many areas... but IMHO, should not be. The end of a contract should be exactly that: the end of the rights and responsibilities of the terms of the contract for both parties. There are some things, of course, that need to survive expiration (confidentiality, for example), but clauses like these in effect begin a new contract with the former employee upon their leaving the company, one that is beneficial ONLY to the company, and holds no consideration to the employee. This, by defini

        • (confidentiality, for example), but clauses like these in effect begin a new contract with the former employee upon their leaving the company, one that is beneficial ONLY to the company, and holds no consideration to the employee. This, by definition, is unenforceable (there must be a consideration in effect for both parties). One may argue that the employment itself is the consideration, but in my view, once the employment ends, there shouldn't be any additional terms that come into effect.

          my gut says

          • Re:grumble (Score:1, Insightful)

            by evanism ( 600676 )
            Perhaps you example is valid... BUT

            Employment should be exactly that - you pay me to work for you for the duration of that work, just like a labourer... can you claim that one bricklayer cant work as a bricklayer on another job because I worked on your building site?

            I was hit with the non-compete obscenity. It is absurd and disgusting that companies retrench people saying they are no longer required, yet hit them with non-competes at the same time.
          • I propose that contracts to prohibit disclosure of trade secrets ought to be legal, but not non-competition agreements. Trade secret information, whether developed by the company and told to the new hire, or developed late by the new hire during their employment is property of the company; non-disclosure agreements keep this information under control. However, the hired employee (or contracted) is renting out their abilities and knowledge; restriction ought to be illegal.

            --Matthew
          • Ah, but I wasn't arguing against confidentiality clauses (in fact, I said that those are one of the few exceptions that should be valid), only clauses that in effect start a new contract that begins after the employment terminates. Think about it; a confidentiality clause comes into effect once employment begins, whereas a non-compete clause comes into effect once an employment ends.

            If your employee goes to your competitor a week before your release, and they subsequently (and quickly) release a product re
      • I doubt if very many think that non-compete agreements are invalid everywhere, but many might think that they are immoral everywhere and therefore worthy of scrutiny in, oh say, the your rights online segment.

      • Residual knowledge (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jabelar ( 913707 )
        This is or should be of high interest to all high tech employees, especially engineers and designers. If you learn something while working for one employer, and then leave for a potentially competitive company, how much of your knowledge are you allowed to apply at your new job? Legally there may be many restrictions -- even if you did not sign a non-compete agreement. Companies actually have some right to own things you've learned while working for them!

      • Re:How Is This A Rights Issue? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Michalson ( 638911 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @06:16PM (#14329187)
        You don't know all the facts concerning the case.

        - Microsoft hired Mr Lee, with a generous salary and bonus, to be in charge of developing a specific, and very valuable, asset. Namely the improvement of interface technologies/web interfaces for Asian customers, something that has become very important to global companies with China moving into the IT age. As a condition of his handsome salary, Mr Lee signed a contract saying he would not work in that specific area for a certain amount of time after leaving Microsoft, so that he could not sell Microsoft technology to someone else.

        - Mr Lee and Google began to communicate on Microsoft time. In those communications Mr Lee sent Google information on specific people Google should hire in order to create a shadow version of Microsoft's own Asian UI division, with the understanding that he would be in charge of it.

        - In those same communications, Google identified the fact that Mr Lee's contract made such a venture a very big violation. Knowing this, Google communicated various loopholes and ways to hide what he was doing, suggesting things like Google putting him on a fake paid "vacation" (in which he would actually be working, but done of the record in order to deceive any court that investigated the matter) for a number of months so that he could violate his contract while avoiding the penalties.
      • It isn't neccesarily the non-compete that interest me. It was the changing of one top dog from a largly influencial company to another of simular power and the rucus it caused.

        Microsoft is large enough to forget one of it top employiers left. Google is large enough to not hire that employee for the time it took to end the non-compete agreement. For some reason google wanted him (hint of somethign to come) and for some reason microsoft felt it was enough of a concern to actualy go overseas and enforce that
    • Besides, why is this is an issue for slashdot?

      Because it affects the Google-Microsoft zeitgeist in the space-time continuum of Slashdot???

    • not to mention there is nothing there to discuss...

      MS is satisfied

      Thats a story? or just a lead so we can make bad Balmer and MS jokes?!?

      And what is with: "From the article" ?!?!?

      The only thing missing was a paragraph from Gooogle saying they didnt want to say anything !

      No wonder ppl don't read the articles if they are 90% copied when you do go to read em.

    • Because if everybody's change of companies involved disputes of this nature, we'd quickly end up with a Neuromancer world in a which a change of jobs for a high level researcher or executive required the hiring company to also hire a highly skilled team of mercenaries to pull it off.

      People are not property. And non-compete agreements come perilously close to treating them as such, mostly by making their barrier to entry to any other job too high.

      The only time I can ever see a clause in an employment agre

  • In other news (Score:4, Funny)

    by alfrin ( 858861 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:55PM (#14328557)
    Chairs around the Microsoft office were deeply relieved with the recent settlement between Microsoft and Google.

  • Google's new bedfellows (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Douglas Simmons ( 628988 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @05:03PM (#14328619) Homepage
    I hope Google doesn't forget how they won our hearts; specifically, their unbloated search interface. I understand that these partnerships involve other Google projects and wouldn't literally bloat up the front page interface, but do you think there's any danger of which Google should be aware in allowing their business model to "bloat" beyond straight up ad brokering? Can or will they confine all their new toys to carry out the same function as their search page, which as I understand it is to facilitate the brokering? Should they tap into new markets?

    What I'm trying to ask is, is GOOG still a buy at $431?
    • What I'm trying to ask is, is GOOG still a buy at $431?

      They do have pretty strong cash flow, and their forward P/E looks excellent.

      I'd say that they are priced for at least 2 more quarters of growth at the same pace as the last 4. If they fail to meet expectations there then the repercussions would be severe. If they make them then it's likely the market will continue to price them 2 quarters out.

      When looking at a growth stock it's often useful to see how far ahead the market is to evaluate the risk.

      If th
      • Their PE ration looks excellent? Are you on crack? Google's PE ratio is 95.47! That is a rediculously high PE ratio; it means you're paying $100 to make $1. An excessively high PE ratio means that the stock is priced with future performance already factored in.

        In other words, right now Google's stock price already factors in their earnings growth over the next 6 years, assuming that Google's earnings can grow at a rate of 20%.

        The only reason to buy Google stock right now is if you think the hype will co
        • The forward PE is 50. If they keep cutting the PE in half each quarter, that's a hell of a growth stock!
          • A high forward PE is also not exactly something you want, though the rate of downward movement can be a good indicator of future performance (it is just another way to look at earnings growth). It is not, however, the only thing you should look at.

            Their foward PE is also nowhere near 50 -- it is currently pegged at 74. If you assume that they do equally well FY06 their PE will be 56, still above your 50 figure.

            As I said, their current stock price pretty much factors in all growth expected to occur over th
            • Ahh I did make a mistake. Yahoo has a forward PE of 50.11 for FY06 but for some reason I thought Google's FY end was March, when in fact it is December 06 that was used in the Yahoo numbers. That's still a drop from nearly 100 PE to 50 in one year.

              Using the same methodology as my first post gives it 2 years factored in price.

              Where do you get 6 years from?
              • I think Yahoo's forward PE is overly agressive -- it assumes revenue growth of 46%, and I haven't seen anything which suggests that is a realistic expectation.

                I'm assuming a worst case average growth of 20% over the course of 6 years, with the PE dropping under 30. I don't consider their current growth rate in areas that are currently producing them revenue to be sustainable, but that is just my opinion. They need to expand into new areas to maintain their growth, and I haven't seen anything but speculati
    • What I'm trying to ask is, is GOOG still a buy at $431?

      I really dislike when people throw around "Their stock is $431, Microsoft's is $31, so obviously Google's stock price is too high."

      When you stop back and think about it, you should look at market caps, and how that is relative to other companies and relative to what you think the money is worth.

      If Google had only 100 shares, of course $431 is a good buy per share. If they had 1 trillion shares at $431 per shrare (a market cap of $431 trillion) of course

  • I know what happened... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @05:05PM (#14328631)
    Lee went to Microsoft where Balmer cut off all his hair and killed him, leaving his corpse lying on a big rock in the Redmond campus. The rock later split with a deafening kaboom, and Lee reappeared, unharmed, at Google.

    Yeah, weird, huh? That's life in the dot-com era, though. I've seen stranger things happen.
    • Lee went to Microsoft where Balmer cut off all his hair and killed him, leaving his corpse lying on a big rock in the Redmond campus. The rock later split with a deafening kaboom, and Lee reappeared, unharmed, at Google.

      I see someone else has been reading the Bible recently*.

      * Yes, CS Lewis' story is an adaptation of the resurrection story for children.

  • Did Somebody say Lee? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee,
    Lee Lee Lee Lee Lee Lee Lee Lee Lee,
    We're talkin' fuckin' Lee.
    I had a friend named Lee,
    He cast a spell a spell on me.
    If me and Lee and KG could be three,
    Flyin' free Tenaciously,
    Skinny-dippin' in a sea of Lee,
    I'd propose on bended knee
    To Lee Lee Lee, Lee Lee Lee,
    Lee Lee,
    Lee Lee Lee, Lee Lee Lee,
    Lee Lee,
    Le-Lut-Le-Le-Le-Lee Lee Lee,
    Le-Lut-Le-Le-Le-Lee Lee,
    If me, and Lee, and KG, (that's me)
    Could be three, (could be three)
    Plant a tree, (plant a tree)
    Just for Lee, (just for Lee)
    Just for Lee, (

  • Let me explain it: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stan Vassilev ( 939229 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @05:18PM (#14328721)
    Google has agreed to pretend to agree with Microsoft, and Microsoft has agreed to believe that.

    We all now Kai-Fu is gonna do what he was hired for, never mind if his official position is to brew coffee in the Google Restaurant.
  • Seriously, it's like some Pavlovian response: an article mentions Microsoft and everyone comes up with YACBJ: yet another crappy Ballmer joke. This time it's even worse, because there seem to be no other comments at this point.

    Instead, I think we should just point everyone to his video [google.com]. It's always much better for a laugh. (And yes, that's on Google's site. Consider it a touch of irony.)
  • I wish that third parties, such as "friends of the court" (those who filed amicus curae briefs in the case) could (1) gain access to the sealed settlement, and/or (2) request that any such settlement be blocked. There are a lot of stakeholders interested in having cases like this decided in a court of law, and whenever a sealed settlement happens, it just means that cases just like it will go to court again and again and again and again... Settle it, and let the whole corporate world know the law of the
    • Uhh... actally that would make the legal system far worse.

      If everything set precedent, then what would be the point of settlement?
      Finger pointing disputes such as this would become multi-million dollar slugfests
      and those that could not afford it would be to timid to risk anything that may upset a more powerfull foe.

      A sealed out of court settlement means that the corps involved can walk away, deal made in a short timely manner. IMO, settlement is the most expedient and amicable approach to a dispute left in
    • There are a lot of stakeholders interested in having cases like this decided in a court of law, and whenever a sealed settlement happens, it just means that cases just like it will go to court again and again and again and again...

      none of those stakeholders have wagered a dime on this litigation. nor have they had their employees' lives disrupted by the litigation.

      are these "stakeholders" willing to fund the attorney costs that blocking such a settlement would entail?

  • Balmer promises not to throw any chairs as long as Mr. Lee promises to come back into the conference room.
  • He also declined to give any details on the agreement, saying the terms were confidential and that all parties had agreed to make no other statements to the media regarding it.

    I for one welcome our new possessed Google overlords. OK, not really. :-(
  • Based on the quantity and quality of the replies to this story I can state with confidence: No one cares.
  • This just in: Trade agreement reached... Google to trade Microsoft Gmail and Google Earth for one tough programmer.

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